Imagine a fortress built from the materials mined on-site, a fortress that incorporates the mine itself
into its structure. The fortress grows both above ground and below at the same time, with the visible
and the hidden structures balanced lest the entire structure fail.

I chose a limited palette of walnut, mahogany, burl maple and figured maple to echo the limited range
of materials that would likely be available for such a building. Walnut is for the bones, the original
matrix of rock. The mahogany lies in layers, like sedimentary rock, bedding in cracks and gaps. Burl
maple appears in chunks and lenses, cobbles of older material trapped in the sediments as they harden.
Finally, figured maple enters like an igneous intrusion into previous layers.

Design Notes: "Hall of the Mountain King" began with the idea of two worlds, one above ground, one below, neither necessarily aware of the other's existence. The underground world would be a remnant of
a vanished culture, maybe a barrow or a cavern that had been adapted for some human use, while the above-ground
structure would be a city or that had risen up long after the cavern's culture had disappeared.

As I developed these ideas further, I grew more interested in the visible, above-ground structure growing out
of the hidden, underground structure, and the way these two structures would have to grow together to be
stable. Someone walking along on the "surface" of this world may never find out about the caverns beneath
the fortress, but those caverns would ultimately determine whether or not the fortress would collapse.

The limited palette of woods
I used in "Hall of the Mountain King" visually enhances the dependence of the fortress on the cavern. And, while I have incorporated stone or metal into some of my work, I chose not to do that here because it would would destroy the
illusion I was trying to create that the different species of wood were mined and shaped stone. Real stone doesn't look much like wood.

And yes, it really is a jewelry box.

Thanks to...

Artists don't work in a vacuum. While creating "Hall of the Mountain King" I was strongly
influenced by the incredibly beuatiful work of boxmaker Po Shun Leong and by my lifelong interest in geology
and archaeology.